'Pointing fingers will help no one. The bottom line is we are in a crisis and there is very little we can do anymore.' 9News
And the township is just one of many in the affected Nelson Mandela Bay area of Gqeberha city - formerly known as Port Elizabeth - that rely on a system of four dams that have been steadily drying up for months. There hasn't been enough heavy rain to replenish them.
Like so many of the world's worst natural resource crises, the severe water shortage here is a combination of poor management and warping weather patterns caused by human-made climate change. "Tomorrow, those ones are empty, and I have to bring them again," he said. "This is my routine, every day, and it is tiring."Counting down to Day Zero
This isn't a recent trend. For nearly a decade, the catchment areas for Nelson Mandela Bay's main supply dams have received below average rainfall. Water levels have slowly dwindled to the point where the four dams are sitting at a combined level of less than 12 per cent their normal capacity. According to city officials, less than 2 per cent of the remaining water supply is actually useable.
To put that in perspective, the average American uses more than seven times that amount, at 372 lires a day. Some of the interventions - including patching up leaks and trucking in water - mean some who had lost their water supplies at home are starting to get a trickle from their taps at night. But it's not enough and authorities are looking to bigger, longer-term solutions to a problem that is only projected to worsen the more the Earth warms.
In Kwanobuhle, the public housing is for people with little to no income. Unemployment is rife and crime is on a steady rise. The streets are packed with residents hustling for money. Old shipping containers operate as a makeshift barbershops.
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